Britain’s Labour leader Keir Starmer is a former human rights lawyer and public prosecutor who will need to focus his tireless work ethic and methodical mind to improve the country’s fortunes.
If the exit polls are confirmed, Starmer, 61, will be the oldest man to become British prime minister in almost half a century – a feat achieved just nine years after he was first elected to parliament.
The married father of two is different from most modern politicians: he had a long and distinguished career before becoming an MP and his views are based on pragmatism rather than ideology.
Starmer repeatedly said during the election campaign that “we must turn politics into service.” He promised to put “country first, party second” after 14 years of chaotic Conservative rule under five different prime ministers.
This mantra coincides with supporters lauding them as a managerially safe pair of hands who will approach life in Downing Street in the same way they approached their legal careers: seriously and forensically.
However, critics see him as an opportunist who frequently changes his stand on issues and who has failed to present a clear and unambiguous vision for the country.
Football-mad Starmer, who is a devoted Arsenal fan, has struggled to shake off his public image of being a reserved and boring man, and has recently started to look more comfortable in the public spotlight.
Supporters admit he has failed to show the charisma of more charismatic predecessors such as Boris Johnson, but say that is where his appeal lies: a reassuring and restrained presence after the turbulent, self-serving years of Tory rule.
With his greying hair and dark-framed glasses – Starmer, who is named after Labour Party founding father Keir Hardie – is also the most working class leader the centre-left party has had in decades.
“My father was a toolmaker, my mother a nurse,” he often tells voters, refuting the image created by his opponents that he is a smug, liberal, icon of the London elite.
Starmer’s purging of left-wing figures from his party has exposed the ruthless side that has taken him to Britain’s highest political office, but he is said to be humorous in private and loyal to his friends.
He has pledged to continue his habit of not working after 6pm on Fridays so he can spend time with his wife, Victoria, who works as an occupational therapist for the National Health Service, and his two teenage children, whose names he does not reveal publicly.
“There is something extraordinary about his remaining so normal,” Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin wrote in the Guardian.
Top Lawyers
Born Keir Rodney Starmer on 2 September 1962, he was raised in a cramped, gritty, semi-detached house on the outskirts of London by a seriously ill mother and an emotionally distant father.
He had three siblings, one of whom had learning difficulties. His parents were animal lovers who rescued donkeys.
A talented musician, Starmer took violin lessons at school from Norman Cook, the former Housemartins bassist who later became DJ Fatboy Slim.
After studying law at the universities of Leeds and Oxford, Starmer turned his attention to left-wing issues, defending trade unions, anti-McDonald’s activists and death row prisoners abroad.
He is friends with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, as they worked together in the same legal practice, and once mentioned a drunken lunch he had with her and her Hollywood actor husband George.
In 2003, he began making moves toward the establishment, shocking colleagues and friends, first taking a job ensuring police compliance with human rights law in Northern Ireland.
Five years later, when Labour’s Gordon Brown was prime minister, he was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for England and Wales.
Between 2008 and 2013, he oversaw the prosecution of MPs who abused their expenses, journalists who hacked phones, and young rioters who caused unrest across England.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II but rarely uses the prefix “Sir”, and was elected as a member of Parliament in 2015, representing a left-leaning north London seat.
His mother died a few weeks before he was elected, of a rare joint disease which left her unable to walk for several years.
Rebellion
Just a year after becoming an MP, Starmer joined a rebellion of Labour MPs protesting against the perceived lack of leadership of the radical left-wing Jeremy Corbyn during the EU referendum campaign.
This failed, and later that year he joined the top team as Labour’s Brexit spokesman, where he remained until Corbyn led the party to its worst defeat since 1935 in the election five years ago.
Starmer returned the party to a more electable central base, ousted Corbyn and rooted out anti-Semitism.
Dominic Grieve, who worked closely with Starmer as DPP when he was the Conservative attorney general, said he “inspires loyalty because he seems transparently decent and rational”.
“These are pretty important characteristics, even if you disagree with a policy. And he comes across as a moderate guy,” he told the Times.
Yet the left accuses him of betrayal because he has abandoned many of the promises he made during his successful leadership campaign, including the abolition of university tuition fees.
But his role in successfully strategically repositioning the Labour Party is indicative of one thing that persisted throughout his life: the desire to succeed.
Starmer once said, “If you’re born without any privilege, you don’t have time to fool around.”
“You don’t walk away from problems without solving them, and you don’t surrender to the tendency of organizations that won’t cope with change.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)